Welcome 2014 Ventura Tigres!! Registration has been closed and we have a full roster again this season. We are happy to welcome our returning families and look forward to meeting the new Tigres families.

There is a lot of information to take in, but we will start with the first day of practice:

WHEN:

Monday, Jan 10th for Bantams, Midgets, Youth and Intermediate
Tuesday, Jan 11th for Gremlins

WHERE TO MEET:

Practice for the first 2-3 weeks will be at Arroyo Verde Park – we will meet at the first parking lot near the bathrooms. Please look for Tigres Board Members under the EZ ups to turn in waivers and show birth certificates. Head coaches will be sending you more detailed instructions for the first day of practice specific to your age group.

WHAT TO BRING:

IMPORTANT!!  ATHLETES ARE NOT ALLOWED TO RETURN TO NEXT PRACTICE UNLESS TURNED IN!

MEDICAL RELEASE/SIGNATURE FORMS which you need to download, print and fill out: https://www.venturatigres.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/2014-tigres-verification.pdf

YOUR CHILD’S BIRTH CERTIFICATE (OR A COPY) We don’t need to keep it, we just need to inspect it.

Also remember to come dressed appropriately with running shoes and clothes and be sure to have sweatpants and jackets for after practice. Water bottles, jackets, sweats and bags should all be labeled. You should be receiving e-mails from your coaches this week with more detailed instructions.

PRACTICE INFO:

Schedule for the 2014 Season

GREMLINS: Tues & Thurs 4:30-5:30ish
BANTAMS: Mon, Weds, Thurs 4:30-6:00
MIDGETS: Mon Tues Thurs 4:30-6:00
YTH/INT: Mon Weds Thurs 4:30-6:00

Practices will be at Arroyo Verde until further notice, but we will move to Buena High in a few weeks.

MEET INFO:

Our first meet is a practice meet and will take place on March 8th. For anyone who will be experiencing their first meet – not to worry – this is why we have a practice meet. Kids will learn what to expect, and parent volunteers will know what their volunteer duty entails. You will be a pro by the end of the day!

This meet does count as one of your volunteer obligations, so if you are unable to be there it is imperative that you let the volunteer coordinator know. Contact Kris Shah at kzshah@aol.com for any questions.

UNIFORMS:

IMPORTANT!!!!
Anyone needing uniforms (especially new athletes or athletes that skipped a year) – please visit the Apparel store NOW and make your orders. If we run out of certain sizes, we can still order in time for our first meet – but we need to know now so we can make the order!

In order to compete in a Tigres meet, an official Tigres Singlet (running jersey), proper running shorts and proper running shoes are required. Ordering uniforms and other Tigres merchandise is done on the Tigres website here: https://www.venturatigres.org/tigres-uniforms-apparel/

If you registered during the “open” registration period, and you paid $150 to register your child or children, then you should have received a unique “gift code” to redeem in the Tigres Apparel store which is equal to the amount of a Tigres Singlet and running shorts ($40) per athelete registered at $150.00. If you didn’t receive the code, please contact Erin @ erinsap@gmail.com and your code will be sent to you ASAP.

Again, if you haven’t placed your order, please do so now.

**NOTE** For those with uniforms from last season that don’t fit – consider donating it to families in need – you can turn in to board members at practice.

If you have not already purchased track shoes, you can wait until your first day of practice to get recommendation from your coach. The type of shoe you wear can vary based on the types of events you plan to compete in.

REFUNDS:

Anyone who decides they no longer wish to participate, you will be issued a full refund if you request it prior to Tigres’ first practice (February 10). Refunds after practice has started, but prior to the practice meet (March 8) will be at 50%. Refund requests can be sent to tigres@venturatigres.org.

COMMUNICATION THROUGHOUT THE SEASON:

We understand how frustrating getting details can be – and we have worked hard to make sure information gets to everyone.  We have several outlets for pushing the updates to you to make sure you get notified, but some of it you will need to opt into.  You can make sure you know where to get all the news by going to this page:

https://www.venturatigres.org/stay-updated/

The communication tools we use are as follows:

1) VENTURATIGRES.ORG: Everything gets posted to VenturaTigres.org and then automatically gets pushed out from there.  Team wide news will be on the home page and then there is a page for each age group (from the homepage, in the top navigation mouse over “TIGRES NEWS” and look for your child’s age group.

Not everyone checks the website so from there – those updates to the site go to:

2) EMAIL: We have created 6 different mailing lists, and you could be on more than one, but at least 2.

The first email list is for the entire club – everyone who has signed up for Ventura Tigres this year. For that list – ANY info that gets posted to the website, you will receive by email. This is reserved for last minute info like a cancelled meet or practice, meet results, fundraisers etc…

Then we have an email list for each age group. And for any updates to the website posted by your head coach, they automatically get filtered and sent to, for example – all the families that have a gremlin running.

And, there is an opt-in list for specialty event information – like special training for hurdles or high jump.

We ask that you keep yourself on these mailing lists – but we will remove you at the end of the season and start over the following season.  If you have other family members – spouse, nanny, and/or older siblings in charge of shuttling to practice – you can add those e-mail addresses by opting in to the email list at the “STAY UPDATED” page to make sure they get updated as well.

3) FACEBOOK: On the Ventura Tigres Facebook page. If you haven’t already “Liked” us, there do so here https://www.facebook.com/VenturaTigres. From there you can also go to the “Tigres Updates” tab for individual team updates but all of the updates will also go on to our main feed and consequently in your feed as well.

4) TWITTER: For Twitter users be sure to follow us on Twitter and we will try to keep up there too:  https://twitter.com/VenturaTigres
(what is a Twitter user called? Twitterer? Tweeters? Tweeps?)

5) TEXTING/SMS: we have updates also pushing out to an SMS service called celly. More info on that if you go to the Stay Updated page on the Tigres site.

6) SMARTPHONES: Specifically iPhones and Androids – go to the VenturaTigres.org website from your phone and the website will recognize that you are on a iPhone or Android and show you just the news updates and for iPhone users, look for the falling icon that you can add VenturaTigres.org as home screen shortcut and act as a App.

7) # 6 was the last one – but if you have any ideas on how we can improve this – let us know.

TIGRES PICTURES / TEAM PHOTOS:

We do have a team photo day – one photo of each age group. But there are lots of other photos taken throughout the season. Steve Eidson has taken some great photos over the past 4-5 seasons – and we will see him on the field taking more this year (thank you Steve!!!). Last year we had two team parents helping with some great photos as well (Thank you Erin Mendez & Christal Anderson!) – but the photos we all take at meets could be some of the best  – so if you like to share them you can do so on the Tigres photo page (https://www.venturatigres.org/tigres-photos/). There you will find some photos from last season and links to other Tigres photo sources — but also each of the meet pages has a public photo uploader tool. We will be adding a page for each of the meets for 2014 and encourage everyone to upload just a few photos. Please note: to view the photos on these pages, you DO need to be logged in so they are otherwise all private. If you don’t have a login or can’t seem to get logged in, email Erin @ erinsap@gmail.com and he can reset/update your login.

SHUTTERFLY: We do have a Tigres shutterfly page here: https://venturatigres.shutterfly.com/.  The password for this page can be found by logging into Ventura Tigres and going to the photo page.

FACEBOOK: Photos posted to Facebook can be viewed there or here: https://www.venturatigres.org/facebook-photos/

INSTAGRAM: Yep, there too! If you take pics at a Tigres event, you can use the hashtag #venturatigres and you will be sharing with anyone who is following Ventura Tigres on there.

Again, welcome to the 2014 Tigres Season – LETS GO TIGRES!!!

Your 2014 Ventura Tigres Board Members,
Barry Reagan, President
Lana Campbell, Secretary
Margarida Eidson, Treasurer
Matt Hammel, Coaching Coordinator
Kris Shah, Volunteer Coordinator
Tammy Stender, Board Member
Erin Sap, Web/Timing/Results

STAY UPDATED